LINCOLN — Alex Henery kicks a football in the fall. And for it, he's famous around here — and perhaps as valuable as any member of the Nebraska football team.

“Kind of a little superstar,” as NU quarterback Zac Lee put it last season.

This time of year, though, Henery works in the pro shop at Highlands Golf Course, five miles northwest of Memorial Stadium. There, he's something close to a regular guy. Everywhere away from football, in fact, Henery bears little resemblance to most other Huskers

“A lot of people look at him and say, ‘What? That's not an athlete,'” said John Roode, who coached Henery for six years in youth soccer. “Well, he is.”

Henery is a walking, taking, kicking contradiction.

Just ask Amy Yancy, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln junior from Gothenburg, Neb., who works with Henery behind the counter at Highlands.

On campus, some of his teammates, she said, act like “know-it-all meatheads.”

“Not him,” Yancy said. “He's really shy and quiet and polite. And if anybody ever brings up football, he's like, ‘Oh, yeah, you know ...' with a little grin.”

Recognizable for his gangly build and curly hair, Henery remains uncomfortable with the attention that comes as a result of his powerful right leg. Try as he might, he can't avoid it. The 22-year-old senior from Omaha Burke and former walk-on ranks as one of the nation's best place-kickers and punters.

Reporters can't squeeze much color from him — not after a game-winning, 57-yard field goal or another of his seemingly impossible punts that bounce dead near the goal line.

At the golf course, people swoon and ask questions and want to pose for pictures. One group of men recently saw Henery and scurried to the parking lot to grab a couple of mini-Husker helmets for him to sign.

He always obliges.

“He's not a big fan of it,” said Taylor Rosenbaum, also a Highlands co-worker, “but he does it every time.”

As football season nears, Henery needs 99 points and eight field goals to break Kris Brown's school records. And Henery is far more accurate — 87.7 percent (50 of 57) on field goals to Brown's 74 percent at Nebraska before an NFL career that continues after 11 seasons.

Henery added punting to his chores last season and single-handedly kept the Huskers alive in a few games.

Bottom line: He's a weapon and an undeniably clutch one at that. Henery kicked four field goals in the Big 12 championship game last December, accounting for all of Nebraska's points. He added four more in the Holiday Bowl.

But just how did this happen?

‘Playground legend'

Mike Bailey, the former soccer coach at Burke, knew all about Henery before he arrived as a freshman in 2002.

“He was sort of a playground legend,” Bailey said. “He was doing things that were unbelievable. Everybody knew who he was.”

Bailey, who also served as an assistant coach for the Burke football team, helped convince Henery to play football as a freshman. Primarily, they had to convince Henery's mother, Mary Henery.

“I just told him I didn't want him to get hurt,” she said. “He assured me that he wouldn't.”

Until he turned 15, Henery focused solely on soccer, and it explains a lot about his football success.

He grew up on the Gladiator age-group teams in west Omaha, playing for Roode, who believes that Henery could have advanced to the U.S. national team if he stayed with soccer.

For six years, Henery took every penalty kick for Roode.

“I don't ever remember him missing one,” the coach said. “When the situation got really tough, he just wanted to take over. Nothing special. That's his job. That's his whole attitude about everything: ‘I'm capable of doing this. Why shouldn't I step up and do it?'”

Henery got better in the big moments. During key games for the Gladiators, Roode said, Henery often took over the final minutes.

At Burke, he scored in the opening minutes of the first soccer game his freshman year. Bailey just looked at his assistant coach and nodded knowingly. In 2003, Henery's sophomore year and his first as Burke's varsity punter in football, a snap sailed over his head. Henery scrambled for the football and ran to avoid the rush before unleashing a punt that traveled 40 yards and rolled another 20.

As Henery trotted to the sideline like it was nothing, coach Jack Oholendt ripped off his headset and screamed down the sideline to Bailey, asking if Henery had just kicked that ball with his left foot.

“Yeah, he did,” Bailey said. “The average kid would have been scared to death and just fallen on the thing. But not Al. For him, it's just a natural play.”

Sound familiar? It continues at Nebraska.

‘He's got it'

With Henery, it's more mental than physical. Sure, his “leg snap,” according to his former coaches, separates Henery from most kickers. It's like a golfer or a baseball hitter who swings with great velocity.

But his approach to kicking leads to Henery's clutch performance, and it began in Roode's club. The Gladiators preached focus. They ran drills that forced players to kick only with their left feet, handle stress or remove emotion from the game.

Roode said he talked to his players constantly about composure. Henery, apparently, listened. His approach and a meticulous attitude — Henery is almost obsessive about perfecting his technique — make for a lethal combination.

“I like to think I taught him a little bit about kicking,” Roode said. “But he's so gifted in his mental approach that I didn't ever have to do much with that. When he was on the soccer field, he instinctively knew what to do, where to go.

“If he'd have picked up a basketball, he'd be a good basketball player. He's just got that it. I don't know what else to say. He's got it.”

In fact, Henery has turned serious about golf in recent years. He worked at Champions Run in Omaha before Highlands. Rosenbaum, a freshman at Nebraska this fall who golfed at Lincoln North Star, has played a few times with Henery.

“The first time we went out there, I didn't expect much,” Rosenbaum said.

So what did Henery shoot?

“Probably about 3 or 4 over.”

That's the thing: Don't underestimate Henery.

It's not an act

The Colorado coaches and players surely didn't think that Henery could connect on that 57-yard field goal on Nov. 28, 2008. In the balance sat an eight-win regular season in coach Bo Pelini's first year and a trip to the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla. If Henery missed, it likely would have meant a trip to the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas, instead.

Henery's mom had her doubts too.

“I was just concerned for him,” Mary Henery said. “It was an awfully long kick, and I wondered why they would even try it.”

Pelini diagnosed Henery. The kid wanted a shot. And to Pelini, that was better than fourth-and-25 from the Colorado 40-yard line, down one point with 1:43 to play.

From afar, Roode and Bailey sensed the same. Roode said he figured Henery's limit at 53 or 54 yards. But when he saw Henery's warm-up swing, Roode said, he thought that it had a chance.

“I bet that's the most nervous he's ever been in his life,” Roode said, “which still isn't very nervous.”

Looking for insight, people crowded around Bailey, who was watching the game at his in-laws' home near Kansas City.

“If you're going to have one person do something like that,” Bailey said, “he'd be about the first one to come to mind.”

Henery, of course, nailed the kick. And barring something momentous this fall to upstage it, that ice-in-the-veins moment will last as his legacy at Nebraska.

After the game — and really, ever since — fans and media clamored for an explanation from Henery. How does he do it? What's his secret? Henery just shrugs and offers something basic. Unfulfilling almost.

Long ago, Bailey learned to accept it.

“You almost start to think, ‘Is this an act? This can't be his real personality,'” the coach said. “But it is. That's Al. And it's why he's so great.”

Contact the writer:

402-473-9587, mitch.sherman@owh.com

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